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Tuesday 27 July 2010

Stop smoking

I was recently asked by a fellow personal trainer some advice on giving up smoking. I used to smoke. Yep, before all the triathlon I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes and drink a lot of alcohol. Oh how I wish I hasd never done it, I would be able to buy myself a lovely Scott Plasma 3 for next season!!! Anyway, here is the advice I gave. This may be useful for anyone else out there who is wanting to quit.
"Well, the most important thing I can say is that it takes a massive amount of energy to give up. What I mean by that is, it is such a big part of someone's life that it requires an immense effort and a lot of focus and concentration to give it up. So what might help is to find another source of focus. Also, on a scale of 1-10 how committed is he to giving up? It has to be 10. If it is he will do it. Small steps. 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, awake, 24 hours, 1 day, 2 days etc. You get the picture. Smoking is 99.9% mental habit. It is not physical addiction. Break all associations if you can with smoking. If he has a coffee with a cigarette, stop the coffee. If he has a break at 11am every day, move that break to 10:45. Try and break down any habitual behaviour. It will scramble the brain and it won't be able to focus on the need for a cigarette.
Just be positive about it. Don't focus on the smoking as a real negative thing. Sounds a bit odd. But smokers can get very defensive about their habit if you bang on about how awful it is. He has smoked, he is still alive and he can change. It's all about you just supporting that change and finding ways in which you can help him break the habit.
Remember, goals are massive. So think of the small steps above, and set regular short term goals, and he will be successful in quitting."

3 comments:

DotNetSi said...

Yup, the addiction is mostly psychological. As you rightly say thats the battle. The remaining challenge is the chemical addiction which is an easy one when you consider:

a) The only reason your body wants the nicotine is because the last shot you gave it has stopped working

b) The withdrawal symptoms of the actual chemical addition last no more than 3 days - After that, as you say its the mental associations - When you expect to have a cigarette (mostly sub-concious thoughts).

Took me a long time to realise the above, which is when I finally became a non-smoker after many not-so-successful attempts.

Steve Birtwistle said...

Took me years too Si. On and off, quitting for a couple of months here, a couple of weeks there. Not until I got myself really focussed and turned my whole lifestyle around was I successful in giving up. I can safely say that now I really don't think about cigarettes as something to enjoy. But it's taken almost 4 years to get to that stage!

Anonymous said...

I need to stop!! I know for a fact it is in my head as I go hours without a cig at work and don't even think of it, so i need to get my ass in gear and just STOP!!

Great advice Steve

N xxxxx

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